


Tracks; River; Hope

by Kastaka



Category: Bronte - Gotye (Music Video)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So small. So different. So fragile...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tracks; River; Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Venturous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venturous/gifts).



She was.

Came from the nowhere, out beyond the river.

Ran lightly through the forest; lightly, but clumsily; we catch her.

She is such a small thing, but she is not afraid.

She was.

\----

She took the littlest antlers down off the wall; the ones that must have been from a young deer or antelope, slightly fuzzy with their velvet.

\----

She is.

She is so tiny, her fur so thin, so unevenly distributed.

But she places her bare, shorn hand on our shaggy behorned foreheads.

She's little more than a mouthful, but she is not afraid.

She is.

\----

With an expression of great concentration, she folded them into the sides of her headband, padding them with foam until they seem to extend from her own head.

\----

She...

We don't understand.

We didn't understand, but we hope...

They came to the forest.

They came with their guns; with their booming footsteps; with their booming voices.

She had to go. She had to. She had to protect us.

We would have kept her, but she was afraid. 

She was not afraid of us. She was never afraid of us.

She was afraid for us. 

She was afraid of what the people with the boots and the whistles would do, if she was found with us. 

So she took off her antlers and she took off her mantle and she shivered in the darkness, away from our furry bulk, away from our comforting heat.

She took off her antlers and they found her alone, lost and alone, like a child who has been living on berries, afraid of the night.

But she was not afraid for herself.

\----

It took several adjustments to make them not dig into the sides of her head, but finally she twisted her hair just so and held it in place with some simple ties, and that completed the padding nicely.

\----

We saw her again.

From time to time, across the river.

She only saw us once. When we were sure the others wouldn't.

When we were sure that we wouldn't break her trust; because they could never know, or they might come for us, who she had gone to such lengths to protect.

She looked... small. So small. So different. So fragile... so afraid.

Afraid of what the others might think.

They didn't see us.

\----

She would have liked to claim, later, that she had planned this; if she ever told her story, she would say that she wore the antlers to assert her status, to show that she was a mighty hunter.

\----

We left it there.

When we returned, we saw her tracks.

We tasted the salt on the headband; dried up, gone away...

We... we can't wait. We don't wait. We don't come when anyone calls.

\----

But at the time, she couldn't have told you why she was doing it. She just needed to. To feel powerful. To feel connected to something.

\----

Sometimes they come into the forest.

Often in twos, sometimes threes, sometimes a small group of them; but sometimes they are alone.

Most of them are afraid. Some of them are contemplative. 

Some of them are looking for some privacy; some of them are looking for a place to sit and chat; some of them are daring each other to go further in. 

Some of them are so wrapped up in themselves they would not see us if we surrounded them.

Some of them do not leave the forest.

Most of them are afraid, and things that are afraid are prey. You think these teeth are just for show? We are not tame beasts. We are not herbivores.

Some of them do not leave the forest.

She is much taller, and she is much longer-limbed, and all wrapped up in herself, as she returns.

By sight, we would not recognise her; but we do not work by sight. By smell, we barely recognise her; she has become a young woman, not a girl...

But she is not afraid - if maybe a little contemplative, now.

We nudge out of the treeline, surrounding her. I am wearing her headband over one horn, but it is small.

They are all small; but she is larger, now, in heart well as in body.

\----

It's not that I wanted to die, she told the doctors, when the other people had rescued her from the forest. It's not that I wanted to die. It's that I didn't want to live... like that... any more.

\----

We smell her new smell.

We smell it all over, and we can feel that she is thinking of being afraid; but she knows us, and so she is not. 

She knows our soft muzzles; she knows our warm breath. And she is not afraid.

We smell her all over, and she relaxes into it. She relaxes into the place between us, the place among us, the place that she belongs. Although... there is a distance, still, to it...

She belongs here; she knows she belongs here; but she belongs somewhere else, too.

She belongs to someone else, too. We can smell it on her.

We can smell him on her, and we converse in soft harrumphs, too low and too animal for her to understand. Should we be jealous? Should we carry her off, deep into the forest, where she will be lost - where she will have to rely on us, where she will have to stay with us?

Should we hunt him? We cannot travel openly in the world without; we are the survivors, we are the ones who did not venture from the forest. We could, says the one who suggested this course of action, request an introduction.

But can we, really? She knows us; she understands some of our signals, some of the things that pass between us; but we cannot translate the things which are obviously of her world, like _introductions_ , like _persuasion_.

And why should we be jealous? We are not hers; she is not ours. 

We were each other's for a time; we could be each other's again; but now we are merely old friends. Childhood friends. And we would not, we think, have it any other way; she could have grown up with us, but she did not.

So our great beast-tongues come out, and we lick her strange, chemical hair down from its elaborate formation, back into the matted strands that we recognise.

But that is all we do to her. 

And we fade. 

Back into the forest. 

Back into the tapestry of life.

And we let her go.


End file.
